This article by George Monbiot, “Libertarians are the True Social Parasites,” is priceless. It illustrates the sort of behavior discussed in longer form in Dean Baker’s book, The Conservative Nanny State, namely, of diehard critics of government intervention who nevertheless want a handout when their enterprise goes bad. Note I refrained from including the extensive […]
Read more...I’ve debated for a couple of days about posting this item, but since it was still nagging at me, I figured it was sufficiently interesting to be worthy of your attention. By way of background, Frank Abagnale of book and later movie “Catch Me if You Can” fame, can lay claim to having been one […]
Read more...An excellent post, courtesy Mark Thoma at Economist’s View, from FactCheck.org, on why its efforts to correct the record are too often counterproductive. In essence, if ideas are falsely linked (say “Saddam Hussein” and “Al Queda”), further discussion preserves the false association. The entire post is very much worth reading; it’s a primer on how […]
Read more...Marguerite Yourcenar’s Memoirs of Hadrian contains a stunning line: “I begin to discern the profile of my death.” The news of this evening has given me the perhaps mistaken impression that the end game of this credit crunch is similarly coming into view. Before, it seemed an open question as to what measures would be […]
Read more...I must be losing perspective to think this has anything to do with the MLEC rescue proposal. From the BBC: Chimpanzees under attack exaggerate their screams to get help from higher ranking group members, researchers from Fife have discovered.The study found primates produce high-pitched and prolonged screams when they were the victims of severe aggression […]
Read more...A very good item at the Huffington Post by Al Norman, “Wal-Mart: America’s Tax Deadbeat,” which describes the lengths the Bentonville company goes to in order to cut its local property tax assessments. This story in essence elaborates on a piece that appeared in the New York Times earlier in the week. The issue here […]
Read more...An article in eFinance Directory, citing the FBI 2006 Mortgage Fraud Report, reports that mortgage fraud played a role in as many as 70% of early payment defaults. The type of fraud wasn’t specified, but one assumes it was mainly overstatement of income. As the story notes: A study of more than 3 million mortgage […]
Read more...Time for some lighter weekend fare…
Read more...One of the things that has been nagging at me is the increasing difficulty of having meaningful discussions about important topics with anything other than like-minded people. Americans increasingly treat their views, be they on Iraq, global warming, civil liberties, or other Big Topics of the Day, as articles of faith rather than positions they […]
Read more...The proponents of a “living wage” in the US have argued that setting minimum wages at a level that leaves full time workers at below subsistence level is bad policy, both economically and socially. While opponents argue that increasing pay for the lowest earners will reduce the number of jobs, elasticity of demand isn’t all […]
Read more...The Financial Times reports today that institutional investors and the SEC are taking interest in the difficult-to-justify pay disparities between the CEO and his immediate subordinates at some public companies. And isolated data points, like Sallie Mae, suggest that the ones with the biggest gulf (in its case, ten times) aren’t delivering commensurate performance. A […]
Read more...According to Bloomberg (hat tip 2Blowhards), well-groomed men do better financially than their rumpled peers. And contrary to popular perception, the impact is greater for men than women. Note that the study measured time spent on primping, and made no effort to assess the efficacy of those efforts. Perhaps the seemingly lower economic impact of […]
Read more...A MarketWatch story says that there is a surprisingly effective motivation for people to conserve energy: keeping up with the Joneses. Research indicates that setting an example is more effective than one might think. So whether it’s owning a Prius, using florescent bulbs, or eating more plant proteins (fish and meat are higher up the […]
Read more...Psychologists, when working with patients, need to differentiate between two types of people: internalizers and externalizers. Internalizers are very responsible and tend to blame themselves for Things That Happen, whether they are their fault or not. They fit well in jobs that demand professionalism and personal responsibility. By contrast, externalizers blame everyone else for their […]
Read more...Michael Panzner of Financial Armageddon discussed a personal finance article in the Wall Street Journal as a sign that it was becoming increasingly acceptable to use the R word: it seems that at least some in the media are coming around to the idea that an economic slowdown is on the cards…. In “When a […]
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